New, Thought-Provoking Book
When the Fire Finds You:
Divorce as Honest Self-Love
Divorce breaks you open. It can also bring you back to yourself.
When the Fire Finds You (coming soon) is a bold, compassionate guide for women who know something is no longer right in their marriage and are ready to face that truth with clarity, dignity, and self-respect. Written by a divorce lawyer with two decades of experience, this book reframes divorce not as failure, but as one of the highest expressions of honest self-love.
This is not a book about impulsive leaving, empty empowerment slogans, or turning pain into performance. It is a grounded, clear-eyed companion for women standing at the threshold asking: Is staying loving, or is it self-abandonment? What if leaving is not a collapse, but a return to me? How do I move through divorce without losing my mind, my values, or my future?
Inside this book, you’ll discover:
*The 5 myths that cause women to ignore what they know to be true
*How to divorce without a war
*How to heal the emotional, spiritual, and practical layers of divorce
*How to rebuild self-trust, voice, boundaries, and inner stability
*How to divorce as an expression of honest self-love
Part legal wisdom, part spiritual truth-telling, and part healing map, When the Fire Finds You sparks a lively and needed conversation about marriage, leaving, and the sacred responsibility of not abandoning yourself.
This book is for women who are done pretending “normal” is good enough, are exhausted from carrying the emotional weight of a marriage that no longer fits, and want to leave with integrity, heal with honesty, and rebuild with self-trust.
You are not required to stay where you disappear or hate your spouse to tell the truth. You are not required to betray yourself to be a good woman. The most loving thing you can do is stop lying.
The fire is not here to destroy you. It has come to return you to yourself.
When the Fire Finds You
A Peek Inside the Book
Divorce as Honest Self-Love
When your marriage requires self-betrayal, leaving can be the most honest form of self-love.
Discover how to transform your divorce into a sacred act of truth.
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Part 1
The Awakening
What You are Calling "Normal"
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Part 2
Reclaiming Self-Trust
The Myths Keeping you Stuck
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Part 3
The Decision Point
Stay, Separate or Divorce
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Part 4
The Sacred and Messy Middle
When Nothing Fits Anymore
How to Divorce Without a War
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Parts 5 & 6
Navigating the Divorce Process
Healing Divorce Wounds with Chakra Healing
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Parts 7 & 8
Making it Real
Celebration and Reinvention
When the Fire Finds You
15 Song Playlist
Divorce can break your heart open. It can also bring you back to yourself.
When the Fire Finds You: Divorce as Honest Self-Love is a book about truth, grief, courage, anger, healing, and the kind of self-love that is born when your old life can no longer hold who you are becoming.
As a companion to the book, I created a private playlist of 15 songs that hold the emotional landscape of this journey. Each song reflects something I speak to in the book — heartbreak, liberation, rage, tenderness, remembering yourself, and finding your way back to your own voice.
Join my email list and I’ll send you the playlist link. You’ll also receive updates about the book, writings, offerings, and resources to support women moving through divorce, reinvention, and honest self-return.
About The Author
Julie A. LaBenz, Esq.
Julie is a native Arizonan, writer, and seasoned attorney who spent twenty years navigating high-conflict, high-stakes legal battles.
Her legal career included a child-custody case that reached the United States Supreme Court, where her arguments prevailed at every stage of the legal process, as well as successful advocacy before the Arizona Court of Appeals.
She has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal for her role in a contentious political dispute that garnered national attention. Julie helped navigate various political battles and their broader implications for local governance and civil liberties.
Known for her clarity, precision, and fierce commitment to truth, Julie built her career helping people move through conflict to arrive at fair and just resolutions.
After decades of witnessing what happens when relationships, identities, and family systems fracture, Julie came to see divorce not simply as an ending, but as a threshold — one that can lead to profound self-reclamation, honesty, and freedom.
Her work is shaped by years of witnessing how conflict, rupture, and reinvention can become catalysts for truth and personal transformation.
Her writing draws on both legal insight and lived emotional wisdom to explore how choosing to leave what is no longer aligned can become one of the deepest acts of self-love.
When the Fire Finds You
A New, Empowering Perspective on Divorce and Endings
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Read When the Fire Finds You: Divorce as Honest Self-Love
This insightful and groundbreaking book asks you to see divorce from an entirely new perspective. Discover how to divorce as an act of self-love.
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Reclaim Yourself in Julie's Self-Love Ceremony
Once you are ready, experience deep healing in Julie's signature Self-Love Ceremony. Learn more below. Sign up for the virtual group ceremony.
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Start Anew at Julie's
When the Fire Finds You Retreat
When immersion is the answer. Spend a weekend with Julie in Sedona at one of her healing retreats.
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Experience Real Transformation through Julie's
Self-Love Ceremony
A sacred online experience to help you release the past, reclaim your worth, and choose yourself — fully and unapologetically.
The Self-Love Ceremony is a guided healing experience for women moving through divorce, separation, or the sacred unraveling of a life that no longer fits. It is a powerful, guided experience designed to help you come home to yourself.
Moving through the chakra system, this Ceremony gently supports emotional healing, truth-telling, release, self-trust, and reinvention. It is for the woman who is no longer willing to confuse self-abandonment with love.
Whether you are just beginning to question your marriage, actively moving through divorce, or rebuilding after the papers are signed, this ceremony offers a space to pause, breathe, grieve, reclaim, and return to your own center.
In this Ceremony, Julie guides you through your seven healing gateways:
Root Chakra: creating safety, steadiness, and ground beneath your feet
Sacral Chakra: honoring emotion, desire, grief, and the right to feel
Solar Plexus Chakra: reclaiming power, boundaries, and self-respect
Heart Chakra: opening to self-love without self-betrayal
Throat Chakra: releasing silence and speaking what is true
Third Eye Chakra: strengthening discernment and trusting what you know
Crown Chakra: reconnecting with meaning, wisdom, and the woman you are becoming
This is not therapy or performance. It is not about blaming your spouse or forcing a particular outcome.
It is a sacred, practical, emotionally honest ceremony for women ready to stop leaving themselves behind.
Available over Zoom
Join from the privacy of your home and be guided through a deeply supportive virtual healing experience. You will receive an intentional structure, chakra journey, and sacred reflection process in a format that is accessible, intimate, and powerful.
[Disclaimer: We cannot guarantee you will experience any healing in the Ceremony. The Ceremony is not a medical cure.]
You do not need to have everything figured out to begin. You only need a willingness to tell the truth and return to yourself.
If the fire has found you, this Ceremony will help you meet it with clarity, courage, and self-love.
When the Fire Finds You Healing Retreats
Join Julie and a small group of select women in Sedona for an immersive healing experience like no other. Reclaim yourself after a major ending in your life.
Let's Talk
With nearly two decades of experience in family law, attorney Julie A. LaBenz offers a rare and deeply informed voice on divorce, reinvention, self-trust, and the transformative power of choosing oneself. Her work invites a more expansive conversation around divorce — not simply as a legal ending, but as a profound turning point in a woman’s relationship with her truth.
Julie is available for podcast conversations, workshops, panels, media features, retreats, speaking engagements, and live events.
Julie's speaking and media topics may include: When the Fire Finds You, The Self-Love Divorce Journey, Healing Divorce Wounds Through the Chakras, and How to Divorce Without a War.
© Copyrights by LaBenz Law, PLLC. All Rights Reserved.
